A Note about Grasswire

When we started Grasswire, we knew we would face many challenges in building an entirely crowdsourced news organization. We anticipated that the journey would be filled with bumps in the road.

Over the past few weeks we hit a few of those bumps. We were hoping to close a funding round with a new investment partner which would have allowed us to grow the team and further develop the technology, but it fell through at the last minute. Our existing investors are willing to invest again, but we didn’t feel that this investment opportunity would put us in the best position to scale the company.

As a result, we are trying to find a new home where Grasswire can continue to grow. We want to make it clear to Grasswire users that, whatever happens, we’ll do everything we can to make sure Grasswire stays around indefinitely.

The incredible thing about Grasswire is that it is completely self-sustaining. From the thousands of news reports written collaboratively by users to the apps our community is building to help disseminate those reports, Grasswire exists solely because of the passionate users behind it. Everything that happens on Grasswire happens because of the community.

After some painful cuts, the total cost to keep Grasswire running amounts to nothing more than the cost of servers — an amount that we feel could be raised through crowdfunding should no other options present themselves.

We feel this is a unique opportunity to create a viable news organization funded and run by a collective of everyday people. Imagine a world where news focused only on the important stuff instead of optimizing for cheap clicks obtained through half-truths or worse. News by the people in every way.

So we are still exploring the available options that will allow the Grasswire community to thrive & grow. If you have any ideas or thoughts, feel free to reach out.

Thank you all for the fantastic work you’ve done, and above all else for your love of truth.

Yours,
Austen Allred
CEO, Grasswire